Odd & Awesome: Coyote Ugly Pantera

Project car hell or a diamond in the rough? Either way I’m massively intrigued by this ’74 Pantera GTS with an unfinished Coyote Swap on eBay. While it does look rough and dusty and there is a quite a lot to be done just to get it running and even more work to do to actually make it nice, you can see that money has been spent… $8,000 on Exhaust, $5-6K on the motor, who knows how much on the trans rebuild and the fabrication to fit the motor…. While there are still tens of thousands to be spent to make it what you’d want, you can see pretty quickly that the seller has spent nearly the full asking price, just prepping for the engine swap… and that doesn’t include the price of the car!

While I can’t say I have the time or resources to take on a project like this today, I’m dying to know what this would drive like… the Pantera was always a curious beast to me. I imagine it being the result of a few disgruntled Ford employees who wanted to keep selling Ford GTs and it is kind of an italian cousin to the Ford GT. What would it be like with a motor that’s about 200 lbs lighter and makes 114 more horsepower? Having owned a mostly stock Pantera, i can say the 600lb behemoth between you and the rear wheels definitely made for some interesting handling when it went wrong. With a light, smooth and powerful motor, the Pantera could actually find it’s way.